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Hello,"Is Elvis still alive?" This used to be the
most common question asked of us, but lately your biggest question for PCstats
seems to be "when is the AMD Athlon64 939 getting PCI Express?"
Naturally, if you're a gamer, you want the best CPU and videocard
combination available. The K8 and PCI Express are the ideal solution
to that problem for many of our Newsletter readers...

To find out the answer to this question, I spoke
with a Senior Product Mgr at MSI
Computer.
It seems as far as the question of the Athlon64
and PCI Express goes, there are three chipsets coming from VIA, SIS and
nVidia which will introduce support for PCI Express to the K8. The details
are pretty tantalizing, so lets have a look at what's covered in
this PCstats Newsletter before we get into all that!

So as
it stands, the upcoming VIA K8T890 chipset for the Athlon64 will support PCI Express and AGP8X videocards, and
is expected to arrive around the end of September... if VIA can keep it together. Odds
are 50/50 on that. Meanwhile, the SIS 756 chipset is set
to hit mass production by mid-September. The SIS756 is probably going to
be the first chipset into retail channels to support PCI Express and AGP8X,
given that nVidia's next chipset isn't slated to be announced until next
month. Expect nVidia's Crush K8-04 solution to arrive under the 'nForce
3' nomenclature. Along with PCI Express and AGP8X support, the CK804 will introduce SLI. If
you recall, SLI is a feature which enables the use of two nVidia PCI Express
x16 videocards side-by-side on one motherboard. Neither the SIS or VIA chipsets will
support SLI, so nVidia will have the corner on that market for the time
being.

Now
that AMD's Socket 939 CPU has been released, consumers can finally use
dual channel DDR RAM with the Athlon64 processor! Heck, they even have the
choice of upgrading to a higher end Athlon64 FX CPU if they wish. In this
extensive review, PCstats tests the brand new
GA-K8NSNXP-939, a socket 939 motherboard from Gigabyte. The Gigabyte
GA-K8NSNXP-939 is powered by the nForce3 Ultra chipset, and includes an
onboard Serial ATA
RAID controller, IEEE 1394b Firewire,
Gigabit LAN, a 10/100 NIC, 7.1 channel audio, dual BIOS chips and
Gigabyte's proprietory Dual Power System (DPS).Continue
Here>>

Video cards and cars are very much alike in a lot of
ways. There are fast videocards which crank out pixels faster than greased
lightning, and then there are affordable graphics
adaptors that the average consumer can use to play games at more
reasonable speeds. Sure, we'd all like to have the equivalent of
a Porsche, but sometimes all we really need to get the job done is a
practical Ford. It may not be as fast, or fancy, but it will get you from
point A to point B. We usually focus on higher end parts here at
PCStats.com, but in this review we'll be evaluating the little PowerColor
ATI Radeon 9250 videocard. It's Radeon 9250
GPU makes it a low end videocard
by most standards, but the card should provide computers tasked with
office loads plenty of great 2D performance for the long haul. Continue
Here>>

The Registry is crucial to Windows, but if you know how
to edit it, you can customize your system in places you never
thought possible.

The
registry is a huge and complex structure which is absolutely
crucial to the correct operation of Windows XP. As you can imagine,
editing the registry opens up a Pandora's box. In this article, we will
take a behind the scenes look at the Windows XP
registry. The composition of the registry will be examined, as well as how to backup and protect and restore it.
Once we have that out of the way, we will examine some of the things you
can easily achieve by editing the registry yourself. Continue
Here>>

In this review, MSI Computer have
given us the opportunity to test out one of their latest PCI Express
videocards, the ATI Radeon X600 based MSI
RX600XT-TD128 videocard. Along with the X600 core
comes 128MB of DDR memory, a pair of
video outputs (analog and digital) and even an S-Video output. The
necessary cables are included, along with a surprisingly large amount of bundled
software.Continue
Here>>

Since Crucial's inception, the
company has never catered towards the enthusiast market... Yet, now that
Crucial has released the Ballistix
line especially for enthusiasts. Each heatspreader encapsulated DDR2
module is 512MB each in size, and features sleek black
PCB shielded by orange aluminum heatspreaders!Continue>>

The jet black Aopen H420 is a
compact desktop chassis intended for use with MicroATX
or FlexATX
motherboards. It is large enough that full height
AGP and PCI cards can be installed too. Depending on the
application, the Aopen H420 is versatile enough to be
laid horizontally, or standing in a vertical
orientation. The all-steel AOpen
H420 case does seem to have been designed with these applications in
mind, and retails for an affordable amount, with power supply
installed. Continue
Here>>

With
high end
PCI Express videocards in short supply, those of you looking for the
best performance may want to cast an eye towards nVIDIA's GeForcePCX 5900
series. The PCX 5900 core
itself is architecturally identical to its AGP counterpart, the
GeForceFX 5900, but nVIDIA engineers have placed a HSI
chip between the GPU and PCI Express which allows them to communicate
together. The Albatron Trinity PC5900 videocard is powered with 128MB of
DDR RAM, and supports both analog and DVI monitors. Continue
Here>>

PCstats Weekly Tech Tips:
Cleaning out Printer Temp Files

WindowsXP is a big improvement over older versions, but it isn't exactly good at cleaning up after itself. For example, why doesn't WinXP clear its prefetch or temp folders from time to time? It's just one more little quirk to add to you list of maintenance duties. Yay.

Whenever you print something, WinXP automatically sends a temp file to your HDD. When the print job is finished, Windows is supposed to automatically delete this file, but guess what, sometimes the OS just leaves its junk laying around. If you don't like your HDD cluttered up with useless files, go to your system32\spool\printers directory and clear out everything inside. It's a manual tip, but one that will keep things cleaner in the long run.